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FOLK-5 MIXED · THE TEST RUN AGAINST THE WHOLE DIG
Does Walkerton keep a folk hero — a figure the town tells tales about, larger than his record? Jacob Rupel is "renowned" in Chapman's sketch as a deer-hunter — the word is the sketch's own — a man whose skill with a rifle was township-famous in the settlement generation, the classic raw material of a frontier folk figure. But no tale attaches: no hunt, no shot, no contest is told of him in Chapman, Howard, Sherland's compilation, or the open record; the reputation stands without a single anecdote, and a folk hero without a story is a compliment, not a legend. The town's other candidates fail the same test in the other direction: Harold Urey is famous with documents, not tales; the glass cutters are anonymous by the record's own shape. The item prints the test and its outcome plainly — Walkerton's folklore has a renowned deer-hunter at its head and no Paul Bunyan behind him — with the residue named: the Sherland volume's full text and the Independent's reminiscence columns are the settlers for any tale this section's extracts passed over.
Principal sources: Chapman (1880), Jacob Rupel sketch ("renowned deer-hunter"); the negative tale run of this section across Howard (1907), the WAHS exhibits, and the open record.